Over the holiday weekend, while most people were not watching, the National Park Service cut down 430 trees at East Potomac Golf Links. The judge got notice at 4:55 on Friday afternoon, and the chainsaws started Saturday morning. After months of giving the government the benefit of the doubt, Judge Ana Reyes froze further cutting and said the government had lost its credibility. A court cannot put a fully grown tree back in the ground once it is gone.

That is exactly why this matters so much beyond one golf course and one weekend. East Potomac is public land in Washington, and when permanent damage happens before a judge can fully review the dispute, the public loses something that cannot simply be restored later. If agencies can move first and answer questions after, then oversight stops meaning much at all. The people who use, care about, and depend on our public parks are the ones left paying the price. The judge has extended the preliminary injunction as of yesterday, but that is not a certainty.

I am calling on the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service, and especially those within those departments who want to do the right thing, to keep the freeze in place and halt any further tree removal or irreversible work at East Potomac Golf Links until the court challenge is fully heard. If Interior truly believes this is just an old maintenance plan, then it can make that case in court before more damage is done. What it cannot do is rush through permanent changes first and expect the public to accept that later. Waiting for judicial review is the bare minimum when the stakes are this real.

If you believe public land deserves real accountability, please sign. Sign if you believe agencies should not get to create irreversible facts on the ground while a federal case is still unfolding. Sign if you believe East Potomac deserves protection until the truth is on the record and the court has had its say.